Passing Shadows
by Phoenix Dayze
Summary: Satoshi can't seem to reconcile himself with what he's lost. Ten years later he stands in a wellremembered spot and thinks things over. Angst, Darkness, Selfhatred, Mutilation, Death.


Passing Shadows

By: Phoenix Dayze

Disclaimer: I do no own D.N. Angel. This is just for fun.

Looking back, everything didn't seem as terrible as it had seemed at the time. Back then, Satoshi would have done anything to put Krad from him, would have conquered the world if it meant having a life of his own. But now, with mind, body, and soul empty of the insatiable personage that once lived there, Satoshi had learned—the hard way—that without his 'other half', that that was all he was. Empty. A deep, aching void of emptiness. Why had he wished Krad gone? He used to have purpose, a reason for his pathetic life, a way to justify himself. Now there was nothing to fight against except for his own trifling urges. And there hadn't been for some time now.

For years he had been watching his life flow by around him, watching it pass by in a rearview mirror, always looking back. He didn't think that there was anything worth mentioning. Nothing since that final day where Daisuke had kept him from killing himself. He often caught himself wishing that Daisuke had failed, or that he just hadn't cared, that he had allowed him to finish his bloodspell of damnation. He should have died that day, when he would have been a hero, not kept lingering around like an old, discarded fashion trend. He should have gone out while there were people around who would have noticed that he was gone. He didn't think anyone knew that he existed anymore. Ten years was a really long time to hate yourself.

Snapshots of his life floated back to him on a laughing, vindictive breeze, teasing his senses with frozen images that would never die, reminding him of what he'd lost, where he'd gone, what he could never forget. The people he'd known drifting by like a slideshow of awful, separated truth.

_Krad, banished to oblivion. Risa, eyes full of apology. "I fell in love. I'm sorry." A family photo—the twins looked a lot like their mother. Riku, Daisuke's wife of four years, lying stretched out in an ebony coffin, swimming in tears. A funeral was a bad time to catch up on lost time. But Daisuke had disappeared after that day… _

Everything—everyone—was gone now, shattered into nothingness by time-doomed reality. And now there was nothing left to their story but himself and his dark, shredded thoughts. He had very nearly killed himself at the funeral, standing there amongst the dead, and the still living friends who were no less gone, and the ruin of the life that had turned from extraordinary to pointless in less time than it took to blink. It had seemed so tempting, so morbidly fitting to end it all right there and then, but in the end he hadn't. It would have been unnecessarily cruel to Daisuke, who, despite the loss of their friendship, was still dearer to him than his own life. But Daisuke had disappeared two years ago, and Satoshi wasn't sure why it was that he was still waiting around. Death was a secret, intoxicating dream that flitted about his waking eyes, taunting him with eternal peace, and the comfort of absolute anonymity.

So here he was, standing on what used to be Daisuke's balcony—Daisuke's parents had moved after their son's disappearance, taking Daisuke's infant son, Daiki, with them, leaving it abandoned, empty and cold. Satoshi stared out over the water at the Harada twins' equally abandoned home, like he and Daisuke had done so many times in the past. It washed over him with beautiful, painful familiarity. So much agonizing, comforting truth in such a simple scene. But this was his past, a part of him that he'd lost, and had been missing. And even though he knew that nothing could bring it back, that the children they'd been, the innocence and the tainted maturity, were gone forever, the act of standing here, drowning in the shadows of years long gone was somehow strangely exactly what he needed.

Only the knife in his hand, Daisuke's absence, and the dark windows across the way marred the illusion. Sad that his intent, his own inner desires weren't that different from before. As a child, controlled by Krad, abused by his father, scorned and judged by the world, he had often stood here next to an oblivious friend, wishing for the courage to jump from the ledge and break on the rocks below. He might have followed through a few times too if he hadn't known that Krad would simple wrench those malicious, breathtaking wings out through the ever-tender skin of Satoshi's never-healing back and fly him back to a place of safety. Krad had always been irrationally over-protective.

But Krad wasn't here now. The whispers in Satoshi's mind were only fragmented memories and the caresses of dark suggestion. Satoshi was completely, irrevocably alone, and there was nothing and no one who could stop him this time. There was only the tiny remaining slivers of himself, and he didn't want to stop. He wanted it all to end. The crushing emptiness, the burning, hollow _ache_ that crawled through his veins, never sleeping, the annihilating reminders of such utter loss that Satoshi merely wanted to cut away his memories that dug themselves deeper and deeper into weightless pain until he could manage to _forget_. He wanted to go back to when he meant something to someone, even if it was just as a body, a wieldable power, a last resort to take down a thief, anything, good or bad, so long as it was _defined_.

That was all he wanted, but it wasn't any likelier to happen now than it had been in the last ten years, and he'd been running in circles long enough. It was time for him to stand still and finally face himself. As if in a dream—one finally realized—Satoshi lifted the cold steel to his arm. He very deliberately dug the tip into the center of his wrist, just beneath his palm, then, thinking better of it, he lifted the blade away. He put it back down near his elbow and began to carve small, straight lines. Red welled up under his knife, a delicate, morbid painting, the very last to be made by Hikari hand. He continued on, elbow to wrist, line after line. He stood back, extending his arm before him, satisfied. He nodded to himself, a bit dazedly, the pain slowly affecting his senses, despite the fact that he wasn't really feeling it. Blood dripped from the carefully carved letters, perfectly capturing the subconscious image of Satoshi's heart. His lips silently formed the lost, precious word. _Daisuke_.

Then, he put the blade back to that spot he'd previously abandoned, and with all the force he could muster, he slit a long, precise line through Daisuke's name, planting all his scorned love, lost hopes, and broken dreams into one single self-damning action, his vein splitting open and spilling his guilt, regrets, and salvation onto the shadows of his childhood.

Weakness flooded him like a numbing shock, and Satoshi fell to his knees in a rapidly growing puddle of his own blood, one arm still stubbornly clinging to the rail. But soon, even that small defiance, that last independence, dropped away. No one was here to see; no one was going to rescue him, so it was pointless for him to still--even in the throes of his own suicide--try to be someone worth loving, worth noticing, someone worth remembering.

The images slowly lost their colors, bleeding into images of black and white as they grew further and further away, a distant life that held no more merit, and the endless voices inside of him, the real and the imagined, finally fell silent, save one. The steady, thrumming chant that continued to beat within his soul, even as the light faded from his eyes. _Daisuke. Daisuke. Daisuke._

The curtain rose, the barrier peeling away, and light corrupted Satoshi's vision. He was lost, spinning in a swirl of intangible sensation and desperate finality. There was a phantom pressure on his hand that slowly grew solid, a shadow cast over the light, a familiar face staring into his eyes. If he was dreaming, he didn't know. He should be dead. Maybe he was. And if Daisuke was here, then maybe Daisuke had killed himself too, unable to deal with the pain of his wife's death, and that was why no one had been able to find him. Or perhaps it was all just an imagined place of absolution, dreamed into existence by Satoshi himself, yet another atrocity to be accredited to his family legacy and the damned Hikari art.

Not that Satoshi cared about the hows and whys. Daisuke was here, real to him, their fingers laced tightly together the way Satoshi had longed to have them all those nights they stood side by side on the balcony. And Daisuke's lips were pressing gently, welcomingly against his own, a kiss ten years in the making. Satoshi responded hungrily, parting his lips, pulling Daisuke in, joining their bodies in the most intimate embrace. There were brief, teasing touches of a knowing tongue before Daisuke pulled back. There was a chiding look on Daisuke's face, but his eyes were smiling.

Daisuke tugged Satoshi to his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around the now slightly shorter form, his face pressing against Satoshi's pale hair. And when he spoke, his words were like heaven and hell in Satoshi's waiting ears. "Hiwatari, what took you so long?"

The End.


End file.
